Microsoft's Vista Blogger Quits

Preedit writes "Nick White, the in-house Microsoft blogger who wrote about all things Vista, has resigned. White is leaving Redmond to join the blog-centric marketing and public relations firm BuzzCorps. White did not provide a reason for his decision. InformationWeek, however, notes that his position could not have been easy. White's posts often elicited hundreds of responses from Vista users complaining about the OS's numerous glitches and quirks. The story further notes that White is the sort of young, blogosphere-savvy manager that Microsoft needs if it hopes to outrun Google, and his departure raises questions about the company's ability to retain Web 2.0 talent."

Hyperbole

[Lord Grey]

The story further notes that White is the sort of young, blogosphere-savvy manager that Microsoft needs if it hopes to outrun Google, and his departure raises questions about the company's ability to retain Web 2.0 talent.

Oh, please. Trying to assert that the resignation of one blog-savvy employee "questions the company's ability to retain Web 2.0 talent" is just sensationalism. Microsoft is doing a fine job of shooting itself in the foot, all by itself, without anyone publishing hyperbole.

No reason given?

[eln]

The guy was a marketroid who got payed to blog about stuff. I'm guessing the motivation is that his new company offered him a basketload of money to blog about something else, and he took it.

Man finds new job, quits old one. News at 11.

"Web 2.0 talent" = Oxymoron?

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

"Web 2.0 talent" = Oxymoron?

C'mon - when was the last time writing anything that popped into your mind considered a "talent". Blogs...yeesh. I still can't figure out who has the time to read those things.

Re:Hyperbole

[Kamokazi]

Not to mention the fact 'Web 2.0' is probably the stupidest and non-specific internet term used by mainstream media/marketing since 'blog'.

New Vista-Bashing Blog

[lancejjj]

It is tough being the public face of a company. One of my friends was the spokesman for a large aerospace company. He was always "on-call" and had to be familiar with a ton of information at his fingertips.

In contrast, a blogging spokesperson sounds easy, as you can triple-verify everything through the tech staff, legal, and the upper echelons before publishing.

I'd be quite surprised if he left due to anything related to Vista. Heck, MS paid him to support Vista, and I'm sure he will continue to do so under the principle of "never bash a former employer until you retire".

Instead, I think he left for either an easier life and/or more money.

Re:Hyperbole

[hostyle]

A "media officer" and a blogger are hardly "Silicon Valley's top talent". Information Weekly sounds very bloggish to me (without having RTFA), and most bloggers worst crime is thinking that blogging is in some way important in the overall scheme of things. Not to say blogging is bad - some blogs are very relevant and full of useful information or insightful content - but teh vast majority are parasitic gnomes trying to rub shoulders with the few giants that do exist.

Re:"Web 2.0 talent" = Oxymoron?

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

I think you just proved their point. Many of the more innovative people in the IT industry see blogging as a good thing (if it's not a crap blog, of course). That you seem to think everyone who blogs is crap is a hang-up on your part and shows that you might be out of touch with life -- from a good employer's perspective.

Re:Hyperbole

[Otter]

In fairness, the article gives some more prominent examples, although I doubt that Jeff Raikes and Bill Gates are leaving in the hope of striking it rich at a Web 2.0 startup.

Re:"Web 2.0 talent" = Oxymoron?

[Captain Splendid]

I hope I'm not having a whoosh moment here.

No, it's just fashionable to sneer at blogs here on /.

It think it's the same group who claims they don't watch TV either. We can sneer right back at them for being elitist snobs, but we don't really care about that, we just wish they'd shut the fuck up. We heard 'em the first time.

Re:Hyperbole

[Threni]

> Microsoft is doing a fine job of shooting itself in the foot, all by itself, without anyone publishing hyperbole.

They're also producing excellent products, such as Visual Studio (including C# and ASP.NET), SQL Server 2005 and Windows XP. Whether or not they employ someone who's into the time-wasting scene that is blogging is neither here nor there. Were that to be true then any number of klutz with a Geocities account would have wiped out Microsoft years ago.

Propoganda for the LOSE.

[r1v3t3d]

I'd be willing to wager that he got tired of getting paid to lie. Which is precisely the reason I will never again work for Microsoft or any of their sub-companies. I can take a lot of crap from an employer, but when they tell me to flat-out LIE to customers, that's when it's time to move on.

All hype or not, MS *does* need an image makeover

[King_TJ]

Recent surveys indicate Microsoft's overall regard by college and university students has dropped over 40 points in relation to other, similar businesses since last year. Meanwhile, Apple was ranked #1 as having the most desirable image.

Today's college and university students are tomorrow's tech. consumers, so it actually IS important to maintain a good image with them.

Yes, paid corporate blogging and much of this other "Web 2.0" stuff is ultimately going to be shown to be more "fluff" than worthwhile pursuit. Still, sites like MySpace and Facebook are part of this "next generation of web apps", and by all counts, they DO succeed in keeping the attention of the younger computer-using audience. (History repeats itself, folks. Despite the nay-sayers who were USUALLY quite correct about all the stupid e-commerce ideas springing up all over during the .COM/.BOMB fiasco - survivors included Amazon and eBay. Both of those sites didn't do so bad for themselves, did they?)

Microsoft just doesn't want to miss out again, if they ignore the wrong trend and it balloons into something huge....

Right now, their image is really tarnished on many fronts, including the "red ring of death" issues with XBox 360's AND the choice of backing the wrong HD technology for DVDs, the whole Vista fiasco, and an overall perception that the latest updates to their products don't offer very much for the money. (I just don't see nearly the level of "excitement" over the Office 2007 release that I remember people having when, say, Office 2000 came out. Most people using it just seem to be doing so because it was bundled with a new computer system purchase, or they needed to buy it to be legal on a new PC that didn't come bundled with it. Many of these people are students who got a huge price break through their school.)

Honestly, I think as much as people liked to bash Microsoft in the past, they often had a love/hate thing going on. It was difficult not to admire Bill Gates for his success, and/or for his willingness to donate to charities. People were really interested to see documentaries showing the inside of his mansion and so on. He generated a certain amount of "buzz" whenever he gave a speech to discuss his views on technology and ideas for the future. But now, Gates has pretty much retired and people like Steve Balmer are the new "figureheads". Who thinks of Balmer and thinks of anything positive?? He's often referred to as "monkey boy" and is best known for throwing chairs.

Retaining talent & Microsoft's one unique abil

[elwinc]

Back during the high tech bubble, you could make a pretty good bet that a job at Microsoft that included stock vesting privileges would make you a millionaire in about 5 years and set for life in 7. This allowed Microsoft to hire and keep some really talented coders and code managers.

And Microsoft was sort of able to do one thing that no other company could really do. Microsoft was (more or less) able to build some really huge software projects in a few years. Such as WinNT/Win2000 and the Office suite. I'm not saying they were perfect, but they were good enough. And nobody else could execute projects on that scale.

My reading of the (years late, mediocre) release of Vista is that Microsoft has lost that one unique ability. My guess is that the kind of coders that used to put in their 7 years at MS are now headed elsewhere, such as Google. And without that steady supply of top tier talent, MS can't innovate quickly. Regarding the loss of one PR flack, PFFFFFT!

It's confirmed

[qualidafial]

This story is certified Buzzword-Compliant (R).

Re:Hyperbole

[mark99]

Mod this guy up. Microsoft has 80k people now. People come and go in a company of that size.

I am sure they have tons of talent still, and there are lots of interesting jobs in and outside of Microsoft.

Re:No reason given?

[paiute]

You have to wonder about the workplace dynamics. People where I work sometimes get up a lottery pool when the prize is big. What happens in a small shop when half the workers hit the lottery? Do the other half offer congratulations but silently resent them? It would take inhuman strength not too. In the Microsoft cafeteria, there must be a lot of younger employees eating with people who have been there long enough to be much more wealthy than the new guys could ever hope to be - at that company, anyway. It isn't any surprise that most of the ones who didn't hit the MS lottery look elsewhere for theirs.

Re:Hyperbole

[TheRaven64]

Information Weekly sounds very bloggish to me

My custom CSS appends '[TROLL WARNING]' in red to any InformationWeek article. Articles like this really don't encourage me to modify it.

Re:Hyperbole

[rtb61]

What M$ needs are people that know, understand and that can defend the needs of the end user. The catch is, they either leave or get fired. M$ doesn't want to hear why some stupid idea that they forecast will make millions, will annoy a whole lot of customers and driving them away and end up costing millions instead

Representing the customers view point is a lost cause at M$, which is why they struggle so badly in consumer products and lose money and fail when launching new consumer products.

The lost to IPod, they lost to Logitech, they lost to Nintendo and Sony and, they lost to Google and they lost to Yahoo. They lost because they have a real serious disconnect with the customer and because they have a track record for treating the customer with contempt.

Re:Hyperbole

[rohan972]

A "media officer" and a blogger are hardly "Silicon Valley's top talent".

Marketing and PR are the core business for MS. Well engineered products can be bought, the PR machine must be internal.

I call BS

[Luscious868]

I call BS. Microsoft has no business competing with Google in the first place. Microsoft software sucks because the company has become so bloated and the bureaucracy is so big that it's impossible to do anything innovative. Microsoft should focus on what made it such a success in the first place. Operating systems, it's suite of server software and Office on the desktop. Vista is a fucking disaster of epic proportions.

If Microsoft stopped trying to compete with every big tech company out there, eliminated the bureaucracy and spent all of that cash on R&D for the core software that it sells, it might actually be able to produce a half way decent operating system.